As an aside, I suggest running private games rather than solo. Why? The stalker, who gives you nothing if you defeat him, is much more common in solo games, but private games don't come up as solo so he doesn't appear that often. If he does appear, jump on a box and shoot him to death, don't try to out-melee him. One slash dash and he'll put you on the ground, most likely. That always means a revive with him, because he kills you rather than just putting you down, even in coop. He is a rather cool concept, though.

I never knew that; apparently I have been saving myself a lot of trouble by running private so my friends can drop in if they happen to be on.

Didn't dare trying to solo the defense missions, depending on the map, it can be a hazard, although me and Grendel took one to wave 5 just to go further on in the pluto map-tree.

Its easy with Nyx

Guess who FINALLY hit rank 8? Me! Prolly had 10 or more failed attempts but finally got it. Got enough points that I'm ready now for the rank 9 test. Which according to the wiki, is the exact same test. Arg!

How the hell are you guys levelling this fast? I have 5 maxed frames, a dozen+ maxed weapons, and 80% of the missions unlocked and I'm only level 6.

As an aside, I suggest running private games rather than solo. Why? The stalker, who gives you nothing if you defeat him, is much more common in solo games, but private games don't come up as solo so he doesn't appear that often. If he does appear, jump on a box and shoot him to death, don't try to out-melee him. One slash dash and he'll put you on the ground, most likely. That always means a revive with him, because he kills you rather than just putting you down, even in coop. He is a rather cool concept, though.

I never knew that; apparently I have been saving myself a lot of trouble by running private so my friends can drop in if they happen to be on.

Someone on the forums said he comes into solo games as often as 1 in 6 games. I sometimes go a whole week without seeing him at all, though on occasion I see him twice a night.

It's a pretty cool idea IMO; I just wish he gave you something for defeating him. People have been suggesting a mission type where it overrides the mission you're on with an enemy that can't be defeated so you have to run to the exit as quickly as possible. That sounds interesting too.

Didn't dare trying to solo the defense missions, depending on the map, it can be a hazard, although me and Grendel took one to wave 5 just to go further on in the pluto map-tree.

Its easy with Nyx

Guess who FINALLY hit rank 8? Me! Prolly had 10 or more failed attempts but finally got it. Got enough points that I'm ready now for the rank 9 test. Which according to the wiki, is the exact same test. Arg!

How the hell are you guys levelling this fast? I have 5 maxed frames, a dozen+ maxed weapons, and 80% of the missions unlocked and I'm only level 6.

Some of them were playing well before me, and were already close to Master levels 8 and 9. I do believe one of the Ars Tenno is at Mastery 9 already. It sounded like a huge pain for nothing but bragging rights.

Some of them were playing well before me, and were already close to Master levels 8 and 9. I do believe one of the Ars Tenno is at Mastery 9 already. It sounded like a huge pain for nothing but bragging rights.

Yeah, I'll admit I was a bit obsessed when I started playing (months ago now). The only way to keep getting mastery is to constantly switch to new weapons/frames to level. Spending plat on the faster affinity generation (the one thing I wish I could reset, really) also helped.

I also managed to avoid most of the real mastery tests, as they were all just "go kill five dudes" until the switchover recently.

The number of melee to primary/secondary weapons also REALLY slows down the mastery gains, as once you've leveled all the primary/secondary weapons, there are still a ton of melee weapons left to go (and it becomes the only way to gain mastery). I believe currently there are insufficient weapons/frames to reach mastery level 10. I am REALLY looking forward to the prestige system, if for no other reason than it won't feel like a waste to run around with weapons I've already leveled once.

I also kind of wish mastery above four DID anything, but that's another whole discussion.

So I figured out what that blue-matrix-energy-freezy thing was that I was seeing on pub defense missions; it's the Vauban ability Bastille coupled with the Vauban ability Vortex.

The Vauban is a weird frame. It seems almost ludicrously overpowered for fights where you're stationary, like defense missions and possibly boss fights - but otherwise it seems far too oriented toward tactical placement for the run-and-gun nature of the game.

Bastille was amazing, it would hold 2 dozen or more infested stationary for an extended period. Vortex was even more crazy; if they guy could place it somewhere good it would kill a ton of mooks.

The energy grenades and jump pad though; I can't see how you would even use the jump pad when you can just run up walls. And the energy grenades require the monsters to come to you.

Jump pad: I've seen places where you'd want to get up on balconies that you couldn't run up a wall and jump onto. That said, I'd say it's fairly likely to be mostly worthless except possibly for throwing in a narrow doorway and letting the mobs (I refuse to call them mooks) walk over it and bash into the ceiling. Energy grenade doesn't look all that useful, but you can spam it, and if it doesn't have a duration limit, watch out. Especially vs corpus I bet Vouban is a monster. And Bastille/vortex do seem well suited toward infested as well.

That said, it otherwise looks like a relatively weak frame.

I have an unranked Banshee waiting on me to finish my Excal prime, an unranked Mag waiting on me to claim it, and as of last night I definately have the parts for Frost in production and I may have the parts for Ash as well (two items labeled ash helmet but one looked like ash systems other than the name). We'll have to see if it's a bug or not, but I took the risk. If it doesn't work out, I'll have to go farm a control module. Lots of levels to grind through in my future.

Grakata sucks. Maybe it gets better leveled up with the crit hit build I've seen, but man, it barely does any damage at all, and it eats ammo almost as fast as twin vipers. I'm also finding the the Lex fires too slow for my taste, but it's not unbearable. Dark sword is pretty mean on a power swing but otherwise it's not very good.

I'm also starting to find myself in the position where I'm not fusing mods I could because I need them for lower level weapons and frames. Oh, but for a reasonable solution to the underclocking mod issue.

Jump pad: I've seen places where you'd want to get up on balconies that you couldn't run up a wall and jump onto. That said, I'd say it's fairly likely to be mostly worthless except possibly for throwing in a narrow doorway and letting the mobs (I refuse to call them mooks) walk over it and bash into the ceiling. Energy grenade doesn't look all that useful, but you can spam it, and if it doesn't have a duration limit, watch out. Especially vs corpus I bet Vouban is a monster. And Bastille/vortex do seem well suited toward infested as well.

That said, it otherwise looks like a relatively weak frame.

I have an unranked Banshee waiting on me to finish my Excal prime, an unranked Mag waiting on me to claim it, and as of last night I definately have the parts for Frost in production and I may have the parts for Ash as well (two items labeled ash helmet but one looked like ash systems other than the name). We'll have to see if it's a bug or not, but I took the risk. If it doesn't work out, I'll have to go farm a control module. Lots of levels to grind through in my future.

Grakata sucks. Maybe it gets better leveled up with the crit hit build I've seen, but man, it barely does any damage at all, and it eats ammo almost as fast as twin vipers. I'm also finding the the Lex fires too slow for my taste, but it's not unbearable. Dark sword is pretty mean on a power swing but otherwise it's not very good.

I'm also starting to find myself in the position where I'm not fusing mods I could because I need them for lower level weapons and frames. Oh, but for a reasonable solution to the underclocking mod issue.

But, but, Mooks are a subset of mobs. A toxic ancient is a mob, but it's not a mook. A corpus crewman is a mook.

Lex engenders a completely different playstyle depending on its mods. Unless you've got it powerful enough to oneshot stuff, OR you have shock damage against corpus so you can get a couple headshots off easy, it's pretty crappy

Plus, its extremely ammo efficient. No more looking for ammo boxes. For corpus defense pugs, its really nice, puggies never wanna go to high levels where its low firerate and long reload become a problem.

I know they plan a temporary fix for Rhino's Iron Skin that will restore full invulnerability but only to a damage cap. I'm not sure if that's a set of cummulative damage or the maximum it will absorb per hit. If the latter it's fine, if the former it's worthless past the easy worlds. They're also fixing IS so it makes you immune to knockdown and poison again.

I know they will be fixing the Banshee's soundquake; it's supposed to stagger and doesn't, so it should.

---------------

It's mostly a content update. Three new tilesets; Grineer spaceships (supposed to be vaguely submarine like), Orokin tileset with special powerups for prime warframes and equipment (if that ever comes), and Dojo tileset. Along with it comes the Clan Dojo, the Clan material bank, etc.

I think throwing knives *may* be there; you can see them on the Voubon preview video but not in use, just rendered, and they were promised eventually in livestream #5 for a secondary weapon choice. Voubon was originally supposed to be part of update 8, so I imagine there may be fixes for his weird behavior depending on what mods you have installed on him. There's supposed to be a hint of a new enemy faction. Frost prime blueprints and a new area that you can get them from. I know this is supposed to be their most ambitious update yet, and U7 was a pretty big change. Account reset was also supposed to be part of this, but that was included in the Voubon patch along with the unannounced market changes.

There may or may not be the scythe-ish skin you see on the Stalker added to the market. I suspect there will be some more fixes for things like the glaive either not doing or not rendering elemental damage when thrown unless you're the host, etc. Typically those things only come up when they release the notes after they release the update/patch/content. The camera change, for example, isn't listed anywhere, nor is the change to the stalker (they never talk about the stalker publically, they just pretend he doesn't exist. Cute, but annoying).

I'm putting my money down on tomorrow rather than today. Today would be better all around, but I bet they'll take the extra time and that they'll want the long weekend to avoid as many people who get pissed about something as possible.

Update 8 is definately this week, per Rebecca the CM on Warframe's forums. Today if they got their shit together, tomorrow if they think they'll have to deal with player rage over more nerfs.

Any bets?

Are there patch notes or anything about what they plan to change?

Hopefully not many more balance changes, presumably they got them out of the way with the last patch. They've said they might adjust Rhino a little.

It should be adding the Dojo, some kind of clan building that you can upgrade. It should allow 1 v 1 dueling. Which will be awesome because it will render the official forums completely useless. Their forum will become nothing but "Someone's class X beat my class Y, nerf them hard!" Supposedly it will allow access to more weapons, but last night in council chat DE_Scribed made it sound like there were only a few new weapons total in the update. Also, there's some new Orokin missions, which take place in a new tileset. Which is gonna have something to do with the Primes. And they've talked about a prestige system, but not said if its coming out for this update or not. Also, at least one of the bosses should be getting a complete rework.

All the info we have is vague. Chatting with DE_Scribed last night was kinda frustrating.

The 1 v 1 dueling is internal clan dueling only, and friendly, and they've said they will do no balancing for things based on PvP. I don't think they really wanted to do the PvP part of it in the first place. I bet the mods there will lock down PvP 'balance' threads quick.

Does anyone have any simple insights into how to best mod weapons? I have a couple warframes and weapons at level 30, but I swear people do way more damage than me. Is there some tricks to picking mods for weapons? I usually just throw everything I can onto a weapon (and not all my mods are maxed out yet, so that definitely affects damage)....

You want serration the multishot mod and the elemental mods that will work against that faction. Fire for infested or electricity for corpus. Cold is good to have too. It probably depends on the weapons you're using some of them just aren't that good.

There are supposed to be some rare weapons you can only get from drops in update 8.There are also void keys I think might allow you to get Frost Prime.I'm already building the Dethcube and the Kunai. I don't know if they're any good but it's a Dethcube so I had to get it.

I also asked for a clan invite before but never got one. I got a friend invite from Vampyre so the name was right but I think it might've been blocked because I had an invite from another clan. I would appreciate another invite attempt. I'm eager to see what the new clan content is.

Slot normal damage, multishot, armor piercing, faction aligned, cold damage, and rate of fire. From there the dps gains are conditional, primarily dependent on the base crit of the weapon for crit+crit damage (snipetron is unconditionally effective, top base crit weapons in each category are usually effective) and the level you're facing (off-aligned resists vary by level from full damage at level 1 and to more or less completely ineffective over level 60 or so). Melee is the special case because charge and normal are independent and since charge attacks are generally more effective for most melee you want charge damage and charge reduction instead of normal and rate of fire.

What are you using currently? We can give you some better ideas if you give us a baseline. In general, though, level up and throw a couple damage mods in and you should see a dramatic difference. I generally at least have one of the vanilla damage bonuses and any elemental. You don't have to be super strict about matching elemental weaknesses, especially if you don't have a lot available. Just bump one up to give you a decent extra damage bonus and status effect.

One thing that might be causing you trouble is using rapid fire weapons against armored targets. Grineer are pretty durable against machine gun fire if you don't have an armor piercing mod and don't shoot for the head. Vice versa, if you're using slow, heavy guns like snipers or the Lex against unarmored enemies like infected, you'll likely get overrun by sheer numbers. It's a good practice to have one rapid fire and one heavy hitter to deal with different defenses. Melee deals alright with both regardless (though blunt weapons are more effective against armor and bladed are best suited for no armor), just make sure to use heavy attacks on armored targets.

Saryn, I'll try to get you one. There are some other leaders who can give you an invite as well.

Dojo costs: JEBUS they're ridiculous. Evidently the Energy Weapons lab alone will cost $30 in platinum for buying the forma. How is that reasonable to still call free to play and not play to win?

Everything is behind a RNG wall now, it seems like. If I was a new player, I'd probably quit quickly. I realize the game is still in Open Beta and that this is a new patch, but do they really think people are going to pay that kind of money?

To be honest, while I like some of the new things, it reminds me of a certain point where Spiral Knights, another F2P co-op game, started adding more and more moneysinks, including chests and keys, to the point that it was getting grotesque for everyone and annoying for free players. Eventually it stops making sense and you get tired of core gameplay. We already have blueprints for keys... Would it be like this if it wasn't a F2P game?

I realize the game is still in Open Beta and that this is a new patch, but do they really think people are going to pay that kind of money?

I guess they think a few rich people will - their founders program initially seemed shocking to me, but there surely are takers. And it's somewhat ironic that a game presented as free-to-play is in effect about money to such an extent.

Dojo costs: JEBUS they're ridiculous. Evidently the Energy Weapons lab alone will cost $30 in platinum for buying the forma. How is that reasonable to still call free to play and not play to win?

Everything is behind a RNG wall now, it seems like. If I was a new player, I'd probably quit quickly. I realize the game is still in Open Beta and that this is a new patch, but do they really think people are going to pay that kind of money?

I guess so, based on the Frame costs.

The forma drops from alert missions, log in rewards and defense missions. And supposedly can even appear in missions that give you a mod for a reward. As far as plat cost, you're looking at the cost if you were buying plat in the smallest increments possible, I assume. I could cover the entire base cost in forma myself with all my Master plat. All the raw materials though, I'm nowhere close, I doubt the entire clan would come close. My guess is that by the time you have the massive quantities of materials you need for the rooms, the forma won't be so bad.

I read the snipetron was removed. They took it out because they don't want corpus guns that fire bullets instead of lasers. The new sniper rifle isn't supposed to be as good. It doesn't have innate armor piercing.

I read the snipetron was removed. They took it out because they don't want corpus guns that fire bullets instead of lasers. The new sniper rifle isn't supposed to be as good. It doesn't have innate armor piercing.

I read that they turned it into a 'railgun'. Basically the same thing.